The Stark Metropolitan Housing Authority obliterated most cardinal rules of real estate when it completed a new home this year in the city’s near northwest area.

The agency spent $297,000 to build a single-floor house, without a basement — on a postage-stamp-sized lot; within an eroding neighborhood; inside an under-performing school district; and surrounded by existing houses valued in the $50,000 range.

“I don’t think it’s a justifiable expense,” said SMHA Executive Director Herman L. Hill.

That tile-floored, brown-sided house with white trim at 820 Fulton Road NW is merely one in an avalanche of problems Hill inherited when hired as the agency’s director in late February.